Catalan Directors Bring Bigger Films to San Sebastian
Catalan filmmakers have arrived at the San Sebastián Film Festival with bigger budgets and wider swings in genre.
Mikel Gurrea's Saints plays in main competition, the festival's top awards section, four years after his 2022 debut Suro competed in the same section, according to Variety.
The money has grown. Annual Catalan government general cinema funding rose from €12.5 million ($14.4 million) in 2019 to €30.2 million ($34.8 million) in specific support lines, according to Variety. The budgets have followed. Saints cost roughly twice what Suro cost, Saints producer Laura Rubirola Salas said.
Gurrea is not alone in stepping up scale. Comic and actor Berto Romero wrote and stars in 5 More Minutes, a comedic sci-fi thriller about an on-the-rocks couple caught in a time loop during a rural getaway, according to Variety. It is a straight genre play, built around a high concept and a two-hander relationship.
Meritxell Colell brings a different kind of ambition. Her third feature, Far From the Trees, was one of the biggest winners at Locarno in August 2026. Variety previously described the film as a meditation on exile, grief, endangered languages and memory. Her first fiction feature, Land of Loneliness (Con el viento) from 2018, was set in a Spanish village.
The San Sebastián presence follows a strong festival run for Catalan cinema. Over the last decade, Catalan productions took Best First Feature for Summer 1993, the Golden Bear for Alcarràs by Carla Simón, and Best Leading Performance for 20,000 Species of Bees at the Berlin Film Festival, according to Variety. Sirât won a Cannes Jury Prize last year and picked up two Academy Award nominations.
The commercial arm is moving too. Paramount Pictures is giving a theatrical release to Tad and the Magic Lamp in more than 40 international territories. Aina Clotet's Alive (Viva) won the 2026 Cannes Critics' Week Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award.
What makes this stand out is the range. A San Sebastián competition title, a time-loop comedy thriller, an arthouse exile story and a studio-backed animation release all trace back to the same production base. For fans, this means more Catalan names showing up in very different parts of the programme.
